


A Road That Leads to Glory

by Ashura



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Diary/Journal, Gen, Lonesome Road DLC, Tribal Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24615544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: It’s all connected. Ulysses, Elijah, Christine, me, Joshua Graham. That war two hundred years ago. Caesar. Randall Clark. Dr. Whitley and ED-E. There’s a much bigger web here than even he knows. (I suppose he knows that? Going insane with questions, it seems to me.)Why am I walking this road?Oh, right. Fate.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. I: 1-5

**Author's Note:**

> Introduced this particular Courier in [Ain't No Cure For Those Old World Blues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301030/chapters/58579570), when she started putting puzzle pieces together and wondering about "Courier X". 
> 
> That said, this follows _Lonesome Road_ pretty closely, so it isn't necessary to know anything other than the DLC.
> 
> There is also a Russian translation by RecklessMind, which can be found [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9739927).

**Part One: Hope on the High Road**

_There’s a road that leads to glory_  
_through a valley far away_  
_nobody else can walk it for you,_  
_they can only point the way._

A message? “Courier Six.” Coordinates. I have a feeling there are answers coming.

Not far from Primm, near a coyote nest. Said goodbye to Boone and Rex. Would rather have them come with me, but this seems...personal. Confusing, but personal.

There’s a song Daniel used to sing, back in Zion. “You got to walk that lonesome valley, you got to walk it by yourself.” I don’t know why, but it’s in my head right now. I don’t know what’s past this disaster of a canyon. I’ve tried for months to ignore it. I think I need to see where this road goes.

_1._

I don’t want to risk being heard by recording. So many blank books from the Sink by now, might as well use them. This is an old missile silo from before the war. But there are others here – ghouls, with flayed skin, like just the muscle showing through. Some are in NCR gear, but patched up with all kinds of stuff, street signs and duct tape and bits of things. What could have done this?

ED-E’s here. Or at least, ED-E Mark II. Storing some logs from a Dr. Whitley, who made him. I’ve saved the audio logs I have to the Pip-Boy, in case it’s useful for the other ED-E back in Vegas. Whitley seems to have been pretty attached. So was ED-E. He can override some of the security, so that’ll be useful, and make energy cells. And despite everything I said about going alone...it’s always nicer not to.

Found a body dressed in a uniform with a lot of bars, with an empty bottle and a gun. Not the first time, but I always wonder about their stories. Looks pre-War. I wish I knew what happened here.

Quite a few sentry bots still active. Glad I have the sonic emitter from Big MT with me.

_2._

A meeting. At last. I told him I would recognize his voice, if we’d talked before. And we haven’t. But I do know it, the same way I know Christine’s old voice, before she had Vera’s.

Who are you, Ulysses?

What the hell do you want?

You say you’ve followed me for years, but as far as I can see, you’ve always been a step ahead. You were in the Big MT before me. You found the Divide before me. You wanted me dead, enough to try and set it up, but not enough to do it yourself. Even then, you say, “not sure that’s how this ends.” But I still don’t know what “this” is.

Am I dangerous? I suppose I am, but I wasn’t always so.

I have lives in me? That is true. Let me tell you about them.

I was the third. The two before me never lived. Babies are fragile things, especially in the wastes.

My mother was from a tribe that no longer existed. Maybe she was the last; if there were others she never found them. She said she would never try to find them, that even if she did, they would still be gone. It took me a long time to understand what she meant. The two babies before me, she washed in water and yucca. She buried them with feathers beneath their feet, so they could fly and their journey would not be long, with cotton over their mouths so they would know how to be clouds, and with a lock of her hair, so they would remember her. She sang to them, and bade them leave their strength here, for the ones that would follow them.

I was the third, and the last. She took me and lay me on their graves, and told them, “This is your sister. Give her your strength, give her your blessing and your love, give her the life you could have had.” She called them by the secret names she had given them. I have one too, but my brother and sister never had any others. They were only spirits and whispers, and they have been with me ever since.

Who are you, who do not know your history?

There is more to history than this road.

_3._

Giants beneath the earth – warheads? How can there be any left after this?

The Marked Men – some Legion, some NCR, so not everything can have been pre-War when this shit went down.

They were definitely here to fight, though, with that kind of weaponry.

When WAS this?

“You can go home courier” written so many times – I haven’t had a home in years, but I don’t think he knows that.

But probably has to have happened in my lifetime? Less than 28 years.

Have been a courier for 10, so more likely since then.

I know I was shot in the head, but my memory’s pretty good. I think I’d remember if I’d been here before.

Maybe Ulysses is just wrong, and it’s some other Mojave Express courier he’s been obsessed with for the last however many years?

This is all definitely way beyond the usual level of damage in the Mojave. Is this the rest of the world looked like, after the bombs? There are definitely two layers of history here, though I’m sure they’re connected.

It’s all connected. Ulysses, Elijah, Christine, me, Joshua Graham. That war two hundred years ago. Caesar. Randall Clark. Dr. Whitley and ED-E. There’s a much bigger web here than even he knows. (I suppose he knows that? Going insane with questions, it seems to me.)

Don’t know if the idea of that web is comforting or fucking terrifying.

The white flags point to the path.

_4._

Ulysses said he discarded his logs. I didn’t know that meant he literally just left them lying around. Maybe there’s an inner Elijah in him after all. Christine fixed his recorder and gave him some holotapes, sometime after he saved her but before she went to the Sierra Madre.

I wonder – I hope she’s okay in there.

Could tell before that Ulysses didn’t care for the Brotherhood’s philosophy. It doesn’t seem like he’s found one he _does_ like yet. No wonder he’s going mad with questions. When did he learn to ask them? I found answers in Zion, but out of order – I hadn’t yet learned the questions. It’s much easier that way around.

(What would have happened, if I’d stayed there?)

_Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings. When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble._

More of those flayed ghouls, the Marked men. Whatever he might have said about the NCR not having a symbol the way the Legion does, so many of them have kept pieces of their old lives on them. Dog tags, patches, bits of old uniforms. A chip from the Tops. They may hate everything now, and I guess who can blame them, but I think some of them might remember there was a time when they didn’t.

Though there are also some who apparently eat each other, so better not to get all sentimental over it.

Speaking of sentimental, this ED-E has more of a personality than the one back home. He’s clearly really attached to this Dr. Whitley, but also gets excited at the posters of these old “Ralphie” cartoons. We found a piece to attach to his circuitboard that helps him make microfusion cells, which is handy – then there were some adaptations so he can do small energy cells or even satchel charges. I wonder how long he’s been here. I told him that Whitley was probably fine, wherever he is, but for all I know he’s been dead a hundred years or something. There was a Colonel Autumn in one of the recordings, but I have no idea who they might have worked for.

_5._

Right, let’s see what this detonator does.

...holy _fuck_.


	2. I: 6-10

_6._

Ulysses was more invested in the Legion than I realized.

I said before that we’re all part of a web, all interconnected with ties of – what? Fate? Death? I’d barely heard of New Canaan, but now I carry others’ memories of its fall. (Like the Father in the Caves – I carry another’s memory of the end of the world.)

Well, then. Ulysses’ log says he’s the one who armed the White Legs with the storm-drums and led them to New Canaan. Joshua thought the sacking of the city was to get rid of him, but it seems like it may not have been, or at least not completely. They waited till he was gone, then slaughtered everyone. They were proud of it; I know that without hearing Ulysses’ words on it. I heard their own. I know what Salt-Upon-Wounds thought of his victory.

And then I didn’t kill him.

Did you know that, Ulysses? I could have. Joshua would have. And I won’t pretend the White Legs aren’t doomed, even if they aren’t gone already. News spreads fast in the Mojave, and other tribes will do what I didn’t. But you know they wouldn't have been better off with Caesar, don’t you? The Legion would have wiped them out, the way they wiped out my mother’s tribe, and the Blackfoot, the way they still want to wipe out the Khans.

Is that why you left them, Flag-Bearer? So you wouldn’t have to see?

_7._

Tunnel here, but the area’s pretty clear, so though we’d bed down for a bit before heading in. I at least want to eat something solid. Bit of a hideaway with a blue Old World flag painted over the wall – think that means a stash of stuff, or at least somewhere safer.

Another old log of Whitley in ED-E’s databanks. Apparently he was outvoted on whether eyebots counted as sentient for the purposes of being experimented on. Says he’s started having doubts about leadership. Well, Whitley, I hope you’re from a long time ago, because you’re going to be really upset if you find out how we do things these days.

Then again, the old days weren’t great about that either. Don’t know if you knew about the Big MT or not, but somehow I don’t think you’d like it.

_8._

One of the books I read back in the Sink was about a  fellow who got talked into letting himself be hired on to a scavving expedition in a monster’s lair. (A dragon, actually, and while I’m at it, why doesn’t anybody use that? Why use a bull or a two-headed bear if you could be a dragon?) Anyway, in the middle he and his friends get captured by some goblins, which seem a bit like super-mutants. He gets lost in their underground lair and is trying to find his way out, and runs across this...creature. Almost human but more lizard-y. Big eyes that glow a bit, because it’s used to seeing underground. Crazy fast and strong. 

I’m mentioning it only because I think that’s what I saw today. There were a lot of them, and unlike the one in the book they didn’t talk. Probably wouldn’t have been interested in a riddle contest. I assumed that whole story was made-up, but maybe it wasn’t, and these are what that creature turned into after the bombs fell. Whatever they were – people, or something else – they’ve been here a long time.

Now, the rest.

I know already that Ulysses thinks the Divide is my fault somehow, but the story seems to go deeper. Was there a road I walked that came here? A place I helped bring about? I sure as hell don’t remember it, but sometimes there are gaps. I’m a Courier. I’ve walked a lot of roads.

But whether it was me or not, apparently there was a town, and a road, another supply line that led into the Mojave besides the Long 15. NCR came to fortify it, so of course the Legion turned up to try and fuck things up for everybody. It’s what they do. But then what? NCR and Legion don’t have this kind of firepower.

I see that I misjudged Ulysses, when all I had to go on were the pieces of his conversations I found in Big MT. He’s every bit as pretentious as Elijah, and sure does like to talk. He has a lot of questions, and I think he tries to make himself believe that there are no answers, because he can’t find them.

He’s also convinced he knows more about me and my feelings than I do. You don’t feel hard for a place unless it’s home, he tells me, but who the hell is he to say what I feel hard for? Maybe I did, and maybe I would. I feel hard for a lot of things, much more than is safe or sensible in my line of work.

But home?

Home was a farmhouse in the desert,  way up the Long 15 . It was part of a settlement but a small one, there were five houses and two of them were related.  There wasn’t much around but rocks, and climbing them to get there was the main thing that kept raiders out. Not worth it when there’s nothing to take anyway. It was made up of people running from something. When my mother fled the Legion’s destruction of her tribe, she ran as hard and fast as she could. She hid, and crawled, and got as far  north and west as she could. She met my  father when she found him  sick from a snakebite and decided to fix him up. She was always a good healer. He could build anything. 

T he whole place was poor as shit.  People wanted safety, but it meant not being able to grow much, or raise brahmin or whatever. I started scavving when I was a kid. I got good at hiding, good at running,  good at figuring out what was worth keeping.  I got to know the desert. Not just where things were, but what can help you, and what can kill you (which is just about everything). 

There was a trader who used to come by every couple of months. His name was Ben Barlow. Just one guy, one merc, one Brahmin. He was a hell of a shot – he had this .44 Magnum and he could shoot the little toe off a cazadore from half a mile off. (Yes, I know Cazadores don’t have toes.)  He’d bring stuff, and we’d trade whatever we could scrounge up for it, but mostly he brought news. I would never have heard of Mojave Express or Couriers or had any idea what the NCR and Legion were up to, without him. 

I knew him most of my life, off and on, so he was starting to get old by the time I was ready to leave. I was seventeen. He said he was headed to the Hub, if I wanted to tag along. That you could get work there. I was a pretty good shot too, so it’s not like it wasn’t good for him to have me around. I think he knew he wouldn’t be making the trip too many more times. It’s not just Couriers who breathe life into places, who keep them going. Traders do that. People do that. The brave ones who keep walking. He’d kept us going. I think he wanted to make sure somebody else would be able to, when he couldn’t anymore.

_9._

Found another of Ulysses’ bolt-holes and another of his journals. Why exactly he didn’t ever deal with the dead body hanging from the window I don’t know, but I guess we all have our reasons. This one talks about him finding the Big MT. I guess he really was following weather patterns, so the Robobrainiacs were right about that.

Speaking of them, I talked to Dr. Mobius about all this. (It takes three fucking days to get back to the Mojave from the Divide, so I hope Ulysses isn’t in any great big hurry to have this showdown. I had questions. Also a serious need for the Sink Auto-Doc after soaking up so many rads it’s lucky I haven’t been ghoulified.)  Mobius says Ulysses is the one who planted the idea in the Think Tank that there might be something outside Big MT. He showed them the Old World flag and reminded them of themselves. He asked what can make or break a nation, and got a true answer, apparently, though it doesn’t seem to have helped him much. 

In his log, he says it was like all of history waking up at once.  But can it be history, if it’s still going on? It’s one more thread, pulling all of us together, tying us into knots.

_ 1 0. _

Guess it’s time to head out. I had a look down the highway through the rifle scope. Pretty sure there are deathclaws. Armor-piercing ammo time, I guess.

Why the fuck am I following this road, again?

Oh, right. Fate.


	3. I: 11-17

_11._

There were, in fact, deathclaws.

Also tunnellers. Think I’m actually getting the hang of those, or else they’re just a bit less scary above ground in the light. You have to be fast, but their hides aren’t thick. Still a problem if there’s more than half a dozen of them, though.

Found some supplies and stuck together a couple of auto-inject stimpacks, because I went through a few of those on the overpass. Found some pretty decent supplies on the way, though – mostly ammo and MREs. Which are foul, but at least they’re food.

It looks like there used to be a Smitty’s around here. A bunch of graffiti on the walls with things like “give peace a chance” looks like it has to be pre-War stuff. Doesn’t look much like Legion and NCR. Though there’s a heart and the word “peace” on the wall right where somebody’s been stabbed, so that sounds about right.

Another audio log from ED-E about Whitley. This one’s a partial recording of him talking to one of his commanders about the Duraframe eyebots. He says they need them for something to do with the Hellfire armour. Isn’t that one of the models of Enclave power armour? Maybe this isn’t all from the distant past after all.

Anyway, it seems like the order to disassemble the eyebots was the catalyst for ED-E’s being here. Whitley told him he’d be just like RALPHIE. I don’t know if this is part of a different puzzle or the same one, but I’m starting to figure out some pieces of it, that’s for sure.

A lot of junk laying around, and I think I’ve found another of Ulysses’ camps. Or if it isn’t his, at least he was hiding out here for a bit. There’s another log. I’ll listen to it after I scrounge up something to eat.

_12._

So he was lying to the White Legs too. I mean, of course he was. We all know what happens to tribes who join the Legion. They stop being tribes. My mother’s people found that out, and his did too.

I can’t tell if he’s feeling guilty about the sack of New Canaan or not. Once you’ve signed on with Caesar, do you even still have the capacity for guilt?

I suppose Joshua did.

Or does he really think that anything good can’t (shouldn’t? Shcouldn’t?) live here anymore? What’s the fucking point of that?

Fuck this. I have better things to do than stay up all night wondering what somebody else feels. Like getting some sleep.

_13._

More Marked Men. The radiation heals them so fast you have to be quick as hell, but a .308 between the eyes gets them just like anything else.

Looks like a terminal here. ED-E’s just unlocked it, so let’s take a look.

_14._

Did I just launch a nuclear missile?

FUCK.

_15._

Still watching where I think it hit. Over the Divide somewhere. At least it didn’t get far.

That’s a shitty excuse. I didn’t know, though. The button was just supposed to open the door. Fuck.

Also Whitley’s definitely Enclave. He tried to send ED-E to Navarro. I feel like that might explain partly what he was doing in Primm, but I’m still confused about some things.

I think I just bombed part of the Divide.

I feel sick. And it isn’t rads.

Do I go on?

_16._

A few minutes to rest. Realized that there’s no point stopping now. Guess I’m seeing this fucked-up road through to the end. (I’m not actually sure I had a choice. I’m the one who keeps going on about Fate after all. Am I as pretentious as Elijah and Ulysses? God I hope not.)

I do think that missile burst over the Divide itself. At least if that’s the case, there’s not a whole lot more damage that could be done. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Elevator down to the silo was full of tunnellers. There is a light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out. By which I mean, it’s really useful for shooting tunnellers in the head.

This is a pre-War US Army missile site and it’s clearly been locked down for a while, but not completely. Along with the tunnellers there was a dead Marked Man in one of the rooms. It’s pretty beat up, after the thing that just launched, but there’s a lot of scrap around. Some armour, ammo, gear, a couple of sentry bots still working and a functional Auto-Doc.

Also found an old eyebot and salvaged part of its circuitboard. Might as well make ED-E stronger.

Right. Onward.

_17._

There’s a lot to tell. I won’t be able to do it all at once – there’s still too much road, and Marked Men and whatever else is out there. I have more answers. So many answers. If he wants to listen, I can give even more.

I don’t know how long Ulysses has been following me, or if it’s quite as literal as he makes it sound. I doubt I was sending him any messages on purpose.

He says he knew of me. My name, my road. At least my name is my own. I have an Old World name too – I wonder if that’s what made him pay attention. But I didn’t scavenge mine out of the carcass of some Old World ruin. It has been mine since I was born.

My father shared a surname with an Old World woman, a sharpshooter from four centuries ago. There isn’t much left to know, but she was good with a rifle. Fast. Accurate. He named me after her. I have two names – one from my mother’s people, in secret, and one from my father. They are both mine.

How much history does he know? Did he see my name on a register, recognize it, and decide to follow me? More fool him, if he did. Fool, or fate, I guess. He says he can find news of me in the East and the West. But I was just another fool needing work in the wasteland.

When I left home, I took a legacy with me. I told my parents I’d go with Ben Barlow to the Hub. I might have said I was headed off to seek my fortune, like in the stories my mother used to tell. We sat on the floor and she braided my hair and told me what to watch out for. My dad fixed up my old shotgun. I told them I’d be back as soon as I knew what was waiting for me.

And I was. Old Ben Barlow knew his route, and people left us alone. I saw a lot of little towns and a whole lot of shitholes. By the time we got there I knew I didn’t want to be a mercenary. I’d rather not kill if I don’t have to. Thought I might have to join a caravan. But then he showed me the Mojave Express. Running messages, packages – it’s still dangerous, but there feels like more purpose to it. Connection. Like you’re doing something important, even if it’s just letting people know their loved ones are still out there. And I know the desert.

It was ten years ago that I signed on. I was eighteen. They found out I knew the Mojave and I was hired. Even so, my first job was a long walk to Junktown, so yeah, I guess I did walk the West. Sac-Town, Bullhead, One Pine, Navarro. I tried to steer clear of Arizona because I knew Caesar was still there. Guess I wasn’t careful enough.

“Whatever you saw out there,” Ulysses tells me, “it wasn’t enough to make you stay.” Of course it wasn’t. My family wasn’t there. I could’ve taken them, I guess. Had them pack everything up and move into NCR territory. But much as I appreciate what the NCR does for people out in the desert, it’s not like everybody in California is doing all that well. For every Heck Gunderson there’s somebody like O’Hanrahan whose family is barely struggling along. Our home was always safe. Nobody knew where it was. I just kept going back.

Every time we talk, Ulysses says this is what the Divide was to me. And there might well have been a place I kept going back to, maybe even a place I loved, that Benny’s bullet took away from me for good. But it’s his home, not mine, that he’s focused on here. I don’t know how he found it, or why. He says a lot of things about bridges and hope, but if we’re as alike as he seems to think we are, he really just wanted peace. Like when I thought about staying in Zion. That place is still like nowhere else I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I go back just to look up at the sky. And why wouldn’t you want peace? Why wouldn’t you want forgiveness and a future, if you happen to be the asshole who sacked New Canaan and told Caesar about the Hoover Dam?

(Is this revenge? I ask. No, he says, that’s not what I would call it. And I’d call bullshit except that I remember what Joshua wanted wasn’t revenge either. A reckoning, maybe. Or an end.)

Curious, he calls me. Restless. Why do you keep thinking that you know me? You say you followed me to the Divide. How long have you been tailing me, exactly?

You blame me for what I made you see?

Then you better finally open your fucking eyes.


	4. II: 18-22

**Part Two: The Valley of the Shadow**

_Mamma and daddy loves you dearly,_   
_Sister does and brother, too,_   
_They may beg you to go with them,_   
_But they cannot go for you._

_18._

A lot of things can kill a place. We’ve all seen it, wandering the way we do. Sometimes it’s raiders. Sometimes people can fight them off – saw it in Goodsprings, saw it in Primm – but other times, you come back past a place and there’s nothing left. Burnt-out buildings, bodies, raider camps if the area’s good for it.

Sometimes it’s the wildlife. There was a group of tribals that tried to set up in what they thought was a safe valley. Turns out nobody had claimed it yet because it was already taken by a deathclaw. Another time it was cazadores.

Sometimes it’s just the wasteland. Ask anybody who’s ever tried to set up in an old Vault and see how well it went for them. Those things are full of crazy shit. And even if you get everything working and it’s peaceful, one good mudslide and you’re trapped forever. I think that’s the kind of thing that happened to the Divide. Pre-War relics waking up. Tech we don’t know how to use, or even what it is. The Old World left a lot of death around for us to trip over.

None of that is what killed my home. It was plain old disease. I got back home one day and the whole place was so quiet. Not that it was ever that lively, but this was eerie. Out of four families, most of one was already gone. All that was left of them was an old man and his little granddaughter, and they closed themselves up and weren’t seeing anybody. Nobody knew where it came from, and my mom was doing her best to cure it. But she was sick too. It got everybody who came close.

At first they didn’t want me to come in the house. But what good would that have done? They’d have all still died, and I wouldn’t have been there. I mean, there’s an argument to be made that staying there with them didn’t do any good either. It’s not like I could cure it. I helped out as much as I could. I went out to pick ingredients for medicines, stirred and crushed and cooked. I dug graves out of the hillside when people died, so we wouldn’t have to just leave them in their homes to rot. One of the kids – well, he was a teenager by then – helped. Jacob. Finally he was too weak too, and then he was gone.

When my mother died, I buried her near the babies. I cleaned her body in yucca and put feathers under her feet. My dad was so weak by then he couldn’t help, but I helped him stagger out to the grave and we sat there, not knowing what words to say. So we told stories. I tried to list everything she’d ever taught me, so that she’d know I was listening.

When Dad died, I did the same thing. He wasn’t a tribal like she was, but I figured he’d want to go wherever she was, and it helped to think they were together. I didn’t know about Heaven yet. I hope that’s where they are, together. It doesn’t seem like a bad place.

When you lost your tribe, Ulysses, did you bury them with feathers, so their journey would be short? Or did you nail them to crosses and refuse to watch them die?

If you’re wondering now why I didn’t get sick too: I did. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I don’t know why I didn’t die with the others, except that maybe my whole family was there watching over me. I was too weak to crawl out of the house. I mostly lay on the floor and tried to lift a canteen to my face. When I tried to eat, I vomited it all back up. I felt like my body was being set on fire. I had dreams, so many dreams, that I can’t even describe. My ancestors all came to talk to me. A coyote told me a story about frogs that decided to fly to the moon. All the crazy shit I’ve ever seen doesn’t come close to the things I dreamed.

But I didn’t die. Eventually I could eat again. Start to move. I don’t know how long it was. I finally managed to get myself outside, just to see the sky again, to get some air in my lungs that wasn’t all closed-in and smelling of death. I sat next to my family’s graves and it was hours before I could find the strength to get up again.

The next day, there was a knock on the door. It was the old man and his granddaughter, the only ones who were still alive. He asked if I blamed them for not helping, and I looked at the graves of everybody I grew up with and said no. I was glad. I was so, so glad they were still there.

We all left Home together. I walked with them till we met up with a caravan that was headed for NCR. They’re working for a rancher out in Shady. We still send letters, and I try to stop and see them when I can. Before I got to Vegas, they were the closest thing to family I had left.

If you found the place now, it would just be empty huts. We took what was worth anything, left what wasn’t. In my old house there’s a loaded pistol and a little food and water, because I know I’ve had my ass saved before when I crawled into a place where somebody left essentials behind, but otherwise there’s not much to scav. It doesn’t look like nobody ever lived there. It’s just empty.

If I brought something here to the Divide that caused this, then I am sorry. Not that I agree it’s my fault – I’ve carried a lot of packages to a lot of places, but I don’t pack them or open them and I’m not responsible for what’s in them. But that’s going to come with dangers, like with the Platinum Chip, and it’s going to come with risks. This is a terrible place, where terrible things happened, and I am truly sorry for any part I had in them.

_19._

Moving slowly. And carefully. I want to see the whole thing, and I’m scavving everything I can because I can say with certainty I never want to come back here again. Gives plenty of time to get this written, anyway. The riot helmet helps. Better than cateye or ghost sight, definitely. I should say I’m still hoping this is all for me to keep my thoughts organized, and not just so Ulysses can have answers when I inevitably get killed by a fire-breathing deathclaw or something and he picks it off my corpse. There’s a lot out here ready to kill me, and I’m not sure how many lives even I have left.

In fact maybe I’ll just save some of the answers. What difference does it make if they die with me?

But I know who Ulysses is now. Not just a frumentarius or a Legion man or the one who trained the White Legs. I knew that already. But the last log we found talks about his tribe: the Twisted Hairs, who weave the stories of their lives into the braids in their hair. One of Caesar’s early conquests.

They were based out of Dry Wells, in the southeast – back before Caesar took over that corner of the Mojave and before I was ever born. They joined up with Caesar, and that turned out pretty much exactly like every other time somebody joins up with Caesar. There are probably still crosses in Arizona with what’s left of their bodies hanging from them.

There’s a certain irony in what the White Legs tried to do. If you corrupt your own tribe by joining up with the Legion, and don’t even have the courage to run away when Caesar destroys everything you’ve ever known, but just stay with him, help him, of course you’re going to corrupt even their memory too.

I saw the White Legs’ hair. I didn’t know then what it meant. But it means exactly what he thinks it did: your own history, twisted beyond recognition, coming back to haunt you.

_20._

I’m not the only one who likes to write things down. Found a bit of a journal from a Private Foster, NCR. Why does that name seem so familiar?

Another recording from ED-E. In all that blabbing on about Home and Ulysses I didn’t even mention the last one. Not that there’s a lot to it. He got shot somewhere along the road by raiders (hand-loaded .308, from the sound of it, to his primary stabilizer). Ended up in a place called Chicago with a family who fixed him up.

It’s not even just that the poor thing flew all the way here from the Capital Wasteland. Somewhere in this Chicago, there is a little kid named Tommy with a dad and a mom and an allowance, who can find a broken robot and take it in as a pet. Maybe civilization is spreading?

I’ve been thinking about this stuff. Now that I have the Lucky 38 and access to a Securitron army, everybody wants my help. House wants me to do what he can’t. Caesar still wants me to kill House, though he’d probably kill me right after. NCR want my help. Everybody wants me doing their dirty work. And then there’s Yes-Man, who could help me take all of it and make a really independent New Vegas. I don’t give a shit about running things, but I’ve been trying to figure out what would be best for the Mojave.

Obviously not Caesar. Fuck him.

But what about the rest? Could an independent Vegas really survive without House? It’s not just that he controls the Securitrons. I could figure out how to do that. But the legend of him is worth something too. Raul says he remembers watching House’s defense systems when the bombs were falling, 200 years ago. Everybody’s afraid of him, but they all kind of respect him, too.

I don’t even know if I could kill him. If I’d want to.

But I’m starting to think the NCR really might be the best hope. There’s shit they need to take care of – they’re stretched so thin, with Caesar out there, so they can’t protect their whole line. Like Cass was saying about the caravans, before. Legion might be terrible, but if you’re moving things around for them, you’re safe on the road. NCR need to be able to do that.

Right now, Vegas is the same. Not for caravans exactly, because it’s only within the Strip, but there’s a lot less fucking around with people than other places. (Can’t believe I just said that when there’s Gomorrah, and the White Gloves were eating people at parties, but I’ve seen a lot of shit, that’s all.)

All I mean is, there’s something to be said for law and order. And if I don’t want to be taking care of everything in Vegas for the rest of my life, it might be better to hand it over to people who are able to work together. Who can organize. I’ve seen a lot of Old World stuff now, and I know NCR are picking up some of the bad with the good. I just think the good might end up being worth it.

Then again, if I’m not running Vegas, what else am I going to do with my life? Starting to think the Courier game is rigged, or at least a bit too risky. Wouldn’t want to accidentally nuke the whole Mojave. Or do I just retire somewhere on the pile of caps I’ve been hoarding? Work for House, keep the Lucky 38, and gamble it all away? Join the Followers of the Apocalypse? Camp out in Zion? Rebuild New Canaan? Find a bunch of kids to keep a secret eye on like Randall Clark?

Oh, hell, I’m too tired to be thinking about this right now. Let’s just find Ulysses, tell him that answer he’s been looking for so desperately, and go the hell home.

_21._

Lucky 21.

ED-E got caught up watching that Ralphie show on a Vault-Tec channel, back when he was in the Enclave. That explains some things, anyway. He wants to go home. Ulysses wants to go home. I’m pretty ready to go home now too, even if I don’t mean it in quite such a deep meaningful way as they do.

More tunnellers. The flash-bangs do stun them, they just also blind you if don’t throw them far enough.

Ulysses asks, have you ever wanted to speak to history? Apparently he was disappointed in his conversations with the robobrainiacs in the Big MT. He heard them talk about America and its ideals and then he ran away because they were too big and strong for him.

He says he saw my shadow behind them when they spoke – if that’s true, why does he still not understand who I am?

_22._

MOTHERFUCKER.


	5. II: 23-27

_23._

I know that Ulysses has been going on this whole time about how he KNOWS ME and that I couldn’t resist making another delivery and he’s going to strip down ED-E for parts. I know it shouldn’t be funny.

But it’s funny.

I mean, I’m so high on Jet and just killed a giant deathclaw so my judgement is probably not trustworthy but this. Is. So. Funny.

He thinks I had a choice.

He thinks HE had a choice.

He still doesn’t know what I know.

Just wait till you know the rest of the story, you motherfucking Legion piece of shit.

_24._

A little calmer now. I think the whole Jet-Rushing Water-combo has worn off.

Still pissed as fuck about ED-E. I mean, I just told him ten minutes before that I wouldn’t let any mean old generals get him and I’m not saying Ulysses is a general, but I still should have been able to keep him safe.

Ulysses thinks that he had a plan.

He thinks he knows what any of this is.

He doesn’t know ANYTHING.

Except launch codes, apparently. So I guess I better keep going and fill him in on the parts of the story he’s missing.

(Okay maybe just a LITTLE calmer.)

Better go a bit faster this time. Apparently my record with nukes is not great.

_25._

At least the tunnellers and the Marked Men aren’t friends or anything. Can’t imagine it would go well for the rest of us if they managed to team up.

Should keep going all night but I’m so tired. Chems have worn off, everything’s sore. Killed some Marked Men in a little room they’ve been barricading from tunnellers so I think I can block the door and get some rest.

God I know I’m still working on the whole faith thing but please don’t let Ulysses blow up the Mojave right now.

I mean, I’m pretty sure he knows I’m coming, and he likes to talk. I think he needs to hear the story I want to tell him.

Mama, keep me safe here just another night, okay? I’ll try to make it right.

_26._

My body’s not really used to chems so maybe that’s why I had such weird dreams. Or maybe it isn’t. I don’t really know what to think anymore. I want to write it down while it’s still fresh and I can remember it.

I dreamed I walked a long road through a canyon. A family of fire geckos were watching me, on top of a ridge all in a line, and they started swaying together and singing that Lonesome Valley song Daniel used to know. They had pretty good harmonies, for lizards.

A coyote jumped down then, to walk with me. I actually like them, you know. I don’t mind geckos, either. One of the things my mother taught me, how to live with them. The coyote hummed a little bit and then said, “Aren’t you worried about going this way?”

I asked why I should be worried.

“There’s a lot you’ve forgotten,” the coyote said. It didn’t sound like he was trying to warn me off, just to make sure I knew what I was getting into. It’s a dream, so of course I didn’t. I kept walking. There were a few times I thought I saw things – deathclaws, cazadores, yao guai – in the distance, but they never came close.

There were things painted on the canyon walls, the way the tribals do in Zion. Human figures with owl faces. A woman with long braids, walking. An Old World flag. A fire and a crack in the sky. Black figures reaching to the sky with arms like lightning.

The coyote said, “The road is a difficult one, but the path is always there for us to follow.” He said it in Joshua Graham’s voice. (I remembered something. When I first met Joshua, he said I wasn’t the Courier he was expecting. I guess he thought I’d be Ulysses? This net that binds us goes back a long time. Longer than he knows.)

The canyon ended. There was a town up ahead. It looked peaceful. I thought that was where I was supposed to be going. The coyote said, “You go on ahead. I’ll be here, when you need me.” He trotted off and became a painting on the side of the stone.

The town was full of people. Settlers, I guess. Some tribals with tattoos like the Dead Horses. More geckos, but they were wearing little hats and talking to people like they lived there. One had a little food stall where he was selling noodles. A man and a woman were bent over a chessboard, playing very seriously. The woman was dressed in NCR uniform, the other was a frumentarius with a wolf-head helmet. Everyone seemed to know me. They all said hello.

I bought some noodles from the gecko. Then a wind came through – that doesn’t do it justice, it was a tornado or a sandstorm or every wind in the world. It blew the whole thing away. It sanded the paintings off the walls and blew over the chessboard and everyone was screaming as they were blown away, down the canyon. Except me.

The coyote was there again. It said, “I did try to warn you. Come.” I followed it to a little house, one that hadn’t been completely destroyed. My mother was inside. She had her potions out, her mortar and pestle and was mixing something. She was making it for an injured man who was lying on the floor, wrapped in a flag. I couldn’t see which flag, or maybe it kept changing, I don’t really remember.

He started thrashing around on the floor, like he was in pain. The coyote sat down on his legs. My mother sat down on the floor next to his head, and began to pour the medicine down his throat. She said that it was Sorrow.

The coyote laughed. “You’re trying to poison him?”

“Not poison,” she said. “Purge.”

The coyote got up then, and started to rip the flag into pieces. It saw me watching and told me to help, so I did. When it was all in strips, the coyote started to wrap the body in it, bandaging it up like the Burned Man. And he was like the Burned Man – not that he had turned into Graham, but that the wind had taken some of his skin. It looked painful.

This whole time, Mama was singing to herself. She began to braid the man’s hair. He had braids already. She took one that meant _revenge_ , and one that meant _death_ , but it was so matted that you couldn’t tell exactly whose death, or how many. She plaited them together so they meant _mourning_ . I know that one well. There was one, on the side toward the back, that matches mine: _courier_.

The coyote and I finished wrapping him in bandages made of the flag. “You’re only going to have to take them all off again,” the coyote said.

The wind was getting louder, and I thought it was time to go. The sound of the wind was a harmony with my mother’s song. “When?”

“Not yet,” it said. And then, “You’ll know when.”

Mama looked me right in the eyes. “Fly far,” she said, “fly fast!”

Water crashed down on us, like the flood that Noah lived through, and I woke up.

_27._

It’s time to have an ending.

Once, all I wanted was a quiet life. To see the world. A few caps for a drink and a bed I wasn’t alone in. I left the battles and politics to other people.

If it’s true that I brought the package to the Divide that detonated the warheads and caused all this destruction, then not only did I curse the Marked Men and release the tunnellers, but I’m also the reason the Legion is still standing. Losing the Divide kept the NCR from defeating them more thoroughly at Hoover Dam.

That is something to answer for, accident or not.

It led us all around and around, to where we are now. I am not the only one with lives in me, or the only one who was saved for better things. Everything comes around as it should. Those who may have served the Legion, inadvertantly or deliberately, live to orchestrate its fall.

Ulysses was saved by the medical robots for an Old World flag. He lived to lead us back to the beginning.

Joshua Graham was baptized in fire, and lived to lead the Dead Horses and defeat the White Legs. Knowing he lives still eats at whatever remains of Caesar’s soul.

I was shot in the head. I came back to life, and I will change the world.

I am Annie of the Sorrows, of the Twisted Hairs and the Sunset People. I have liberated Zion, claimed the treasure of the Sierra Madre, walked the Big Empty and the Divide. I have brought destruction, and I will bring peace.

I will redeem my tribe. I will make amends. I will not let the world end again.

It is time.


	6. Epilogue

Epilogue:

_Oh though the road be rough and rocky_  
_and the hills be steep and high_  
_we can sing as we go marching_  
_and we'll win that one big union bye and bye._

I don’t know what I expected. New purpose? I have that. Tribe? I have that too.

In Ulysses I found a man who wanted to be stopped. Who wanted to listen. Who wanted a feeling that everything is not pointless, and maybe not ordained. I don’t know that I was what he expected either.

I think not.

My mother fled Dry Wells the night before the massacre of our people, or she would never have escaped. She was a healer, and Caesar only wanted warriors. The Legion is no place for women, and no place for a kind heart. I don’t know how long she planned it, or if she knew that night would be her last chance. But I know she told her people she was gathering herbs to make medicine for them, and then she ran, and until the poor little home in the hills, she never stopped.

(He knew her. He thought either the Legion or the wasteland had killed her. Well, it did eventually.)

I don’t know if she would have rather we showed them mercy. But I do know that when I stopped Graham from killing Salt-Upon-Wounds, which one I was more interested in saving. Ulysses didn’t need the same kind of salvation as Graham. He just needed a push.

Fuck, look at me, I sound more pretentious than Elijah and Ulysses together ever did. It’s all a lot of words to say that given the choice between being merciful and bombing the everloving fuck out of the Legion, it wasn’t a hard choice, and I’m not sorry.

_Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Raze it, raze it, even to the foundations. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us._

I know it’s a small revenge, and won’t even seriously damage the Legion. Nothing will do that until Hoover Dam.

But it means something – to Ulysses, who’s so obsessed with history, and also to me. We still exist. The Twisted Hairs live on. The Burned Man lives on. We will outlast Edward Sallow who calls himself the son of a god. We will outlast the Bull that devoured us, and will devour itself.

We live on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first started F:NV, I wanted to play a tribal. The other Fallout protagonists are all outsiders, while the Courier is the only one who starts out being, and feeling like, part of the existing world. I started learning lore about the Twisted Hairs after having already picked dreads as a tribal marker for our heroine, but before learning about Ulysses. It makes for an interesting playthrough. Annie has a lot on her mind, and it goes especially well with the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou.


End file.
